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Firestone was born in his family's farm house on December 20, 1868 in the small town of Columbiana, Ohio, the second of three children, to Benjamin Firestone, a farmer, and A. Catherine Flickinger. The Firestone ancestors were German immigrants named Feuerstein.After graduating from Columbiana High School, Firestone worked for the Columbus Buggy Company in Columbus, Ohio before starting his own company in 1890, making rubber tires for carriages. In 1895 he married Idabelle Smith. They had six children: Harvey S. Firestone, Jr., Russell Allen Firestone, Leonard Firestone, Raymond Firestone, Roger Stanley Firestone, and Elizabeth Firestone. In 1904 Firestone joined Henry Ford to make rubber tires for the newly popular automobiles. The Ford-Firestone corporate marriage was later cemented when Henry's grandson William Clay Ford wed Martha Firestone, granddaughter of Harvey, who then became parents of current Ford Motor Company Chairman, William Clay Ford, Jr. The farmhouse where Firestone was born is now located in Greenfield Village (Dearborn, MI), a 90-acre historical site founded by Henry Ford. Firestone was concerned both with the manufacture of tires and with securing supplies of rubber from trees: At one point, the company had a rubber plantation in Liberia that covered more than 4,000 square kilometers (1 million acres). During World War II the company was called on by the U.S. Government to make artillery shells, aluminum kegs for food transport and other rubberized military products.
Death
In 1938, Firestone died peacefully at his vacation home in Miami Beach, Florida at the age of 69.
The Millionaires Club
Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone,and President Herbert Hoover. Ft. Myers, Florida, February 11, 1929.
Firestone, Ford and Thomas Edison were generally considered the three leaders in American industry at the time, and often worked and vacationed together. All three were part of a very exclusive group titled "The Millionaires Club" . This was a true gentlemen’s club where one would call another in the appropriate city and ask him to purchase a building or other items for them without so much as a handshake, merely on his word.
Honors
The main library of Princeton University is named Firestone Library in his honor. It is among the largest university libraries in the world. In 1973, Firestone was posthumously inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame. Firestone High School in Akron, Ohio is named in his honor. He also has a memorial there.
Inducted 2006 to the INVENTORS HALL OF FAME
"After working in the rubber industry creating bicycle tires, Firestone founded the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company in 1900 to develop tires for automobiles. He saw the advantages of the pneumatic tire, as compared to the solid tire, and made several improvements. In 1905, Henry Ford discovered these advanced tires and immediately installed them on Ford Motor Company cars. Because of this relationship, many breakthroughs in the tire industry came from Firestone over the next thirty years, including a dismountable rim, the balloon tire, the first low-pressure truck tire, and the first rayon-cord tire."Invention Impact"Harvey Firestone's extensive contributions to the tire industry allowed him to create a company that served as the vanguard of innovation in the rubber industry during the early twentieth century.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company continued to innovate in the rubber industry with improved racing tires and radial tires. Firestone also was responsible for creating a temporary spare tire that is commonly used today."